


Out of an Orange-Coloured Sky

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, First Kiss, Flirting, The Corvega Assembly Plant Sucks Ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 22:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18536881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: This would be nice on her own, or with Dogmeat's big, fluffy head in her lap, but she's the luckiest unluckiest person she knows and it's Piper by her side tonight.orA moment of genuine peace in one of the last places Nora ever expects to find it.





	Out of an Orange-Coloured Sky

If Nora never sees the Corvega factory again, it'll be too damn soon. After finally clearing out the factory floor for the second time in three months, there's a nearly never ending firefight on the roof and up the towers. The echo of shots fired sound over and over, rattling off the metal steps and rails and giving Nora a wicked headache. She runs out of ammunition for her rifle and has to switch to her less-than-ideal 10mm handgun.

She reloads twice, emptying bullets into raiders left, right, above, and diagonal until she finds she's only got six rounds left. There's a wet, clunking sound and a whoop just below her on the stairs. Nora wheels around, and Piper's grinning over the last dead douchebag raider. Her ears ring painfully in the sudden, unfamiliar quiet.

"You okay, Blue?" Piper asks, stepping over the body.

"Yeah, I'm golden. You?"

"Right as rain. I'll be glad to see the back of this shithole though," Piper says. She's eyeing Nora critically.

"Piper?"

"Just checking you out," Piper says. She squeezes Nora's arm above her elbow with just enough pressure to get Nora to face her.

The heat rises in her cheeks immediately. Nora knows Piper's caught her staring a few times, that she's not as subtle as she means to be, but she never expected such forward reciprocity. "Uhh… um. Oh, okay, I was thinking --"

Piper goes bright red and breaks eye contact, fascinated now by the pistol in her hands. "No, no, I only meant that last time, remember, that huge brawl at the meat packing place. You told me you were fine and you collapsed three blocks later. Took an hour to dig that chunk of metal out of your leg."

"Oh! Right, yes, I knew what you meant." Nora knows her blush is getting worse instead of better. "I probably have a few bruises, and I'm sweatier than I like to be, but I'm actually, honestly fine, Piper."

That seems to settle it for the time being and they can set themselves to the grim task of seeing what these former bandits are carrying. It's become second nature after her months in this place and time, but it still sets Nora's teeth on edge until she can choke down her revulsion.

Piper has no such qualms. None of her friends seem to. When she travels with anyone besides Strong, they recognize her discomfort and even if they don't empathize with it and they generally let her take a step back while they do the dirty work. Nora has long since realized her squeamishness is just another old relic.

"Do you think we need more machetes? That's basically all these poor sods were carrying. And a thousand busted pipe guns." Piper's voice filters down from the walkway above.

"We're good on machetes, I think. If you pile them somewhere out of the way, we can come back if we need the metal," Nora says. She's found a small trove of various sized ammo and that's about all she's able to carry in her pack for today.

"Cram?" Piper holds the scuffed tin up as an offering. If someone told Nora that Cram would turn into one of her favourite foods, she would have either laughed in their face or thrown up in her mouth a bit. And yet, here she is.

"Amazing," she says, taking the tin and cracking it open. The lettering and logo are beat to hell and back and barely blue anymore, but the Cram tastes just like Cram even after all this time.

Piper scoops some mush from the can on her pinky finger and licks it clean. "Mm. Cram."

And that's all anyone can really say about it.

The dust has settled, the gunfire echo has faded, and the sun is setting beyond the scrubby trees and low, dusty thickets. There's something akin to peace settling over Lexington and Nora thinks it's catching. She makes herself comfortable on the metal grating and lets her legs dangle into the open air. Piper does the same and their knees bump as she arranges her coattails.

"One hell of a day," Piper remarks.

"Can you remember a day that wasn't?"

"Luckily no, not since you rolled into my life, Blue."

Their words fall away to the concrete below them and they sit comfortably in the quiet until the Cram is gone.

Nora digs her fingertips into where her neck and shoulder meets on both sides to try and relieve some of the tension that seems to stay there permanently. "We oughta head out," she says, making no move to stand.

"Where ya thinking? Mystic Pines is usually pretty quiet. Unless you wanna head for Covenant?"

Despite the inherent creepiness, a quiet night at Mystic Pines with Piper sounds like the only acceptable end to another shitty day spent clearing out Corvega. Nora's about to agree when there's a flash of movement in her peripheral vision. With one hand on her pistol and the other held out to warn Piper that something could be up, Nora turns her head as slow as she can manage.

There's nothing there, just a sort of moving lightness in the sky. Nora lets out an explosive sigh of relief and Piper does too. "Rad storm?"

"Maybe, but it doesn't really smell like it."

Piper wrinkles her nose and pulls up one knee so she can turn to get a better look. Nora doesn't think she'd be ballsy enough to lean like that with just one piece of two hundred year old railing between her and an eighty foot drop, but that's why Nora's Nora and not Piper. These little dangers don't even ping with Piper, it's all just her easy, comfortable nature, at home in whatever near-death experience she can get herself into.

"A Brotherhood vertibird?"

"Not the right colour," Nora says, squinting. "Seems… green almost."

"Oh, yeah, I see that."

The longer they look on, the more it becomes obvious it's not a vertibird, a fire burning somewhere nearby, or a typical radstorm. Shimmering greens and blues seem to move in the sky on, under, and between the clouds like a projection.

"There was something like this, maybe it still exists…" Nora recalls something from before the bomb and the vault. "The Northern Lights. Nate saw them when he was deployed. Said it was like the most incredible kaleidoscope in the sky at night. I think he told me what made it happen, but I don't remember…"

"So like, it's not some new shit the Commonwealth dreamed up to fuck with us?"

"Maybe," Nora says. Possibilities race to mind of new, horrible troubles to face, but her typical anxieties seem muted while her eyes are glued to the dancing lights.

Piper makes a noise of acknowledgement and shifts forward, one leg still dangling and the other boot edging against Nora's back until they're right up against one another.

It's not a particularly cold night, even up so high in the open for every stray breeze to whisk by, but Nora is suddenly aware of the difference in temperature. Piper's body heat at her back and side is a startling opposite to the chill she's feeling in her arms. Her face, naturally, feels like it's on fire. That's happening more and more around Piper and Nora knows what it means. She's not sure how to move forward with it though.

Then it turns out she doesn't need to know. Piper rests her head on Nora's shoulder, close enough to ruffle Nora's hair with her steady breathing. She smells like her cigarettes and the unmistakable, un-air-out-able smell of printing ink that Nora originally thought was her jacket or hat, but over time realized that it's ingrained right into Piper's skin.

"Gotta say, this is almost pretty nice," Piper says. Her voice is quiet, a thing Nora's never really heard, but it's probably because she knows she's right next to Nora's ear.

" _Almost pretty nice…_ " Nora repeats.

Piper huffs out a little laugh and the burst of air tickles against Nora's skin. "I mean, for Corvega. A pretty nice trip to this garbage fire."

"Ahh." Nora's worried if her face gets any hotter, it'll melt off.

Piper must mistake her terseness for something besides a caught-up ball of feelings in her throat because she tries to expand again. "This, I meant. Like, you and me, a little well-earned sit down. Pretty lights to watch. A fresh can of Cram. Or fuck, as fresh as Cram can be."

"You and me is pretty nice," Nora says. She'd been shit at flirting before the apocalypse too and still ended up with Nate, so she's probably better than she thinks, but in this moment she's just amazed her voice didn't squeak.

It's Piper's turn to make a little noise. "Yeah, Blue. Of course it is. Any moment with you is a pretty nice one.Even the ones where we're being attacked. You're one hell of a shot."

"I agree. About all the moments together being nice. I'm sure MacCready has a long argument for my shooting abilities." Nora's voice is still steady and she's blowing herself away with this newfound confidence.

"Aww, Blue… Nora. You're hard on yourself when you don't need to be." Piper brushes her lips so softly against the shell of Nora's ear. Nora thinks it's a trick of her mind, just wanting something like it so much that she imagined it up, but then Piper does it again, with more intent.

Nora twists towards her but the awkward way they're positioned with Piper sideways, half-on and half-off the walkway, and Nora between her legs facing forward, it's a bit of a scrabble face each other. They manage it finally when Nora mirrors Piper's position, her wariness of the seemingly precarious posture forgotten in the instant Piper touches her hip and coaxes her in.

The wind picks up sometime during that first, real, lingering kiss. Nora doesn't notice the leg of her loose fitting pants whipping against her dangling ankle right away until a little, breathy moan from Piper makes Nora lean back and snicker. The openness, the wind, and the distance to the ground from their current location sinks in and she shies away from the edge. Piper chuckles back and moves to standing in one smooth movement before she offers Nora a hand up.

"Mystic Pines, right?" Nora asks, checking her gun, her hunting knife, the rifle on her back in a practiced routine before she hoists her pack and checks the straps there too.

"I think we could use a bit more peace and quiet, right?" Piper says. There's a smirk on the edges of her lips that might be a real smile, one of the ones that make Nora's heart flutter to see.

Nora nods; she'll never decline an offer of a quiet, uneventful night of sleep, even if Piper was hinting at something else.

"So those northern lights," Piper says. There's a shift to her posture and her tone is overly conversational instead of the sweetness of a moment ago. Nora looks at her with a quirked brow.

"You're pretty sure they were a real thing?"

"Yes, they were well documented in plenty of countries," Nora says, before she catches on that Piper is looking past her, not at her.

What appears from so high up to be a crew of supermutants and Forged soldiers together is marching up the concrete and barely being sneaky about it. One of the mutants -- the ugliest? Impossible to say -- is carrying a bundle of metal chunks and wires that crackles with the same green-blue lights they'd been admiring just a few minutes before they stopped to admire each other a bit better.

Nora can't tell if they've spotted her and Piper or not, but either way, getting down and out of Lexington is going to be a pain in the ass. "Oh for shitting fuck's sake."

A bolt of light and sharp sound of electricity snaps from ground level and the air around them seems to shift and twinkle for a moment.

"Understatement," Piper agrees. She's already checking her ammo clip.

"Why can't I just have something nice for an hour or two without this…" Nora trails off and flaps her hands at the spectacle quickly approaching the factory doors. "Shit like this farce happening every time I turn around?"

"Aw, am I something nice? And you want me for a whole hour or two? Blue, I'm touched." Piper's flipped from 'Nora' back to 'Blue,' which means it's time to be sarcastic and shoot stuff again. Nora can handle that, obviously, she's been doing virtually nothing but scathing remarks and gun violence since she left the vault and doing pretty well with it. But now, no small part of her is royally pissed she'll have to smell gunpowder and blood for the next hour instead of Piper's crappy soap-esque product and that perfect paper and ink smell.

Nora funnels her frustration into lining up a perfect headshot with her rifle on the mutant holding the -- who even knows with muties and the Forged working together, is it a weapon? A bomb? -- thing. She squeezes the trigger and her opponent drops where he stands without ever knowing she was there. MacCready would actually be proud, she thinks, or at least something akin to pride.

Piper presses a quick kiss against the side of Nora's mouth in the three seconds of confusion they get between Nora's excellent sniping and the gang on the ground spotting them and starting a fight in earnest. It's not nearly enough, but it's something, a tiny moment of perfection in this familiar place in this unfamiliar time.

Okay, not perfection, Nora realizes as a bullet passes her foot close enough to snap the end off her tangled bootlace. But as close to perfection as a girl can get at the goddamn Corvega Assembly Plant.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> Title from the Nat King Cole song. <3 Diamond City Radio 4eva!


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